Mr. Frank Daly:

I will address the first two points and Mr. McDonagh will address the question on rent abatement. We cannot stop people from leaving NAMA to seek other employment, as they have rights, although we would like to stop them because we are losing many skill sets. All we can do is put in place a robust regime, to which Mr. McDonagh referred, that involves the Official Secrets Act and the stipulations on the use of information. All of that stays with the person for life. The cooling off or guarding leave period is generally six months. The matter has arisen at this and other committees. Six months is probably the maximum that we can do because, if we were paying people to sit at home for one, two or more years, we would be answering other questions from the committee. Mr. McDonagh referred to the greatest safeguard against people getting an advantage because of their time in NAMA, namely, everything is openly marketed. As such, there is no inherent advantage to them.

Regarding the freedom of information legislation, I take it that, when the Deputy refers to secret deals and misused information, she has in mind material that has been put out there but over which NAMA does not stand. We have never come across evidence of secret deals, etc. We have made advance preparations for the legislation and have a team in place under Mr. Ó Faoláin. When the provisions are commenced, we will be ready to engage with them. There is the constant notion that NAMA is not transparent and does not report. To repeat what we have told the committee previously, we are an extremely transparent organisation in terms of our annual and quarterly reports, annual statements, appearances before committees and engagement on a one-to-one basis with Members of the Oireachtas and members of the media. We have only ever had a difficulty with what we regard as confidential commercial information.